Sample Syllabus Gep 204 / 504
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SAMPLE SYLLABUS GEP 204 / 504 BASIC MAPPING: APPLICATIONS AND ANALYSIS GEP 204 (Undergraduate level) GEP 504 (Graduate level) 3 Credits, 4 hours (2 hours lecture, 2 hours lab) Class Meets on Wednesdays from 6:00 - 9:20 PM Gillet Hall, Room 311 Instructor: Dr. Juliana Maantay - Gillet Hall, Room 303 Tel: (718) 960-8574 (718) 960-8574 FAX: (718) 960-8584 e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: M, W, 4:30-5:30 PM, and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course serves as an introduction to the world of maps - how to use, interpret, and analyze maps to obtain information about a wide variety of topics. Discussions include mental maps, aerial photos, remotely-sensed images, computer-assisted cartography, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Laboratory work includes digital map applications and GIS exercises. Through a series of lectures, written assignments, map interpretation exercises, and computer cartography and GIS laboratory exercises, students are taught the variety of ways mapping and GIS can be used in the natural and social sciences and well as in many other fields. The course will cover the history of cartography, basic mapping processes, map projections; scales and generalization, measurements from maps, terrain representation, contour interpretation, topographic features, qualitative and quantitative information, topographic features, use and understanding of cartograms, thematic maps, graphs and charts, digital map applications, and Geographical Information Systems. REQUIRED WORKBOOK: (Available at Lehman College Bookstore) Getting to Know ArcView GIS, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), 1997, GeoInformation International, Cambridge, UK REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS: (Available at Lehman College Bookstore) Map Use and Analysis, John Campbell, 2001, McGraw Hill, New York, NY Mapping: Ways of Representing the World, Daniel Dorling and David Fairbairn, 1997, Addison Wesley Longman, Ltd., Harlow, UK Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier, Hugh Brody, 1998, Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Il COURSE REQUIREMENTS: Cartography Laboratory Assignments (2) 20% Written Assignments - Map Use and Interpretation Exercises (2) 20% Class Participation and Attendance 10% Midterm Exam 25% Final Exam 25% THE LURE OF MAPPING If you gather a group of people together and ask them about maps, you will always get a lively response. Like the universal fascination with moving water, or the dance of a fire's flame, maps hold some primal attraction for the human animal.... In our consumer society, mapping has become an activity primarily reserved for those in power, used to delineate the "property" of nation states and multinational companies. The making of maps has become dominated by specialists who wield satellites and other complex machinery. The result is that although we have great access to maps, we have also lost the ability ourselves to conceptualize, make and use images of place - skills which our ancestors honed over thousands of years.... Mapping can play a useful role in [the struggle to reclaim the commons]. The destruction of land and culture caused by big business and centralized government can be displayed visually with great effect. The wrong of clearcutting, suburbs on farmland, or toxic dumps which, in isolation, may seem unassociated, begin magically to communicate a larger evil when shown in graphic relationship. The cruel division of classes and the allocation of poverty based on race, sex, or age by the present political economy cannot be hidden when charted across our urban neighborhoods. Maps can show a vision for the future more clearly than thousands of words...[However,] no map shows reality perfectly. A map is an icon - a potent representation - but only a skeleton of what is real. The mistake of science is that its goal is to describe the world as a complex machine, and to replace the vagaries of nature's chaos with "management." Counter-mapping is about something else: processes and relationships rather than disembodied facts. The notion that only experts can map is the type of disenfranchisement that [counter-mappers] confront and nullify. [The important thing is] the ability to try [to map], to fill the world again with personal and communal descriptions of time and space. By Doug Aberley, excerpted from "Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment," 1993, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC CLASS 1 August 29, 2001 Introduction to the Course; History of Cartography (This week's reading Assignment, to be done in advance of Week 2's class, is listed in CLASS 2, below. The reading to be done in advance of Week 3's class is listed in CLASS 3, etc.) CLASS 2 September 5 Map Elements Lab Exercise: ArcView GIS Demonstration Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 1; and Campbell, Chapter 1 CLASS 3 September 12 Basic Mapping Processes Lab Exercise: Getting to Know ArcView (GTKAV), Chapters 7 & 8 Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 2; and Campbell, Chapter 2 NO CLASSES September 19 and 26 CLASS 4 October 3 Map Projections; and Locational and Land-Partitioning Systems Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 9 & 10 Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 3; and Campbell, Chapters 3 & 4 Written Assignment #1: Map Use and Interpretation Exercises (Due 10/17) CLASS 5 October 10 Map Scales and Generalization Concepts; Measurements from Maps Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 11 & 12 Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 4; and Campbell, Chapters 5 & 6 CLASS 6 October 17 Terrain Representation; Contour Interpretation; Topographic Features; Review of Written Assignment #1; Midterm Review Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 13 & 14 Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 5; and Campbell, Chapters 8, 9, & 10 CLASS 7 October 24 Midterm Exam: Covers Dorling, Chapters 1-5; and Campbell, Chapters 1-6, 8-10. CLASS 8 October 31 Qualitative and Quantitative Information Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 15 & 16 Readings: Campbell, Chapter 11 CLASS 9 November 7 Cartograms and Special Purpose Maps Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 17 & 18 Readings: Campbell, Chapter 14 Written Assignment #2: Thematic Map Selection and Interpretation (Due 11/28) CLASS 10 November 14 Maps and Graphs Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 19 & 20 Readings: Campbell, Chapter 15 CLASS 11 November 21 Remote Sensing and Aerial Photography Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 21 & 22; and Lab Assignment #1 Readings: Campbell, Chapters 17 & 18; and Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 6 CLASS 12 November 28 Computer-Assisted Cartography and GIS Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 23 & 24 Readings: Campbell, Chapters 19 & 21; and Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapter 7 CLASS 13 December 5 Map Mis-Use Lab Exercise: GTKAV, Chapters 25 & 26 Readings: Dorling and Fairbairn, Chapters 8 & 9; and Campbell, Chapter 16 CLASS 14 December 12 Course Review Lab Exercise: Lab Assignment #2 CLASS 15 December 19 Final Exam: Covers Dorling, Chapters 6-9; and Campbell, Chapters 11, 14-19, & 21. FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING: Aberley, Doug, Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment, 1993, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC Berthon, Simon, et al, The Shape of the World: The Mapping and Discovery of the Earth, 1991, Rand McNally, New York, NY Hall, Stephen S., Mapping the Next Millennium: How Computer-Driven Cartography is Revolutionizing the Face of Science, 1993, NY:NY, Vintage Books Monmonier, Mark, How to Lie With Maps, 1991, Univesity of Chicago Press, Chiacago, IL Wood, Denis, The Power of Maps, 1992, The Guilford Press, New York, NY SAMPLE SYLLABUS GEP 205 / 505 PRINCIPLES OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE (GISc) GEP 205 (Undergraduate level) GEP 505 (Graduate level) 3 Credits, 4 hours Class Meets on Thursdays from 6:00 - 9:20 PM Gillet Hall, Room 311 Instructor: Dr. Juliana Maantay - Gillet Hall, Room 303 Tel: (718) 960-8574 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (718) 960- 8574 end_of_the_skype_highlighting FAX: (718) 960-8584 e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: M, TH, 4:30-5:30 PM, and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course covers basic concepts and theories of Geographic Information Science (GISc), as well as provides actual hands-on experience with a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software package for computer mapping and data analysis. Through a series of lectures, GIS laboratory exercises, and the design of a GIS project, students are taught the variety of ways GIS can be used in the natural and social sciences, as well as many other fields. GIS is beneficial to any field using information which is linked to geography, such as environmental management (including soil science, geology, ecology, hydrology), economic development, real estate, urban planning, public health administration, epidemiology, archaeology, marketing, political science, navigation, and tourism, as well as the traditional geographic fields of cartography, demography, climatology, and natural resources. Laboratory exercises will include simple database creation, generation of statistics, data analysis, and the production of thematic maps and charts. Demographic, socio-economic, environmental, land use, and health data sets will be utilized in the lab exercises. REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS: An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems, Ian Heywood, Sarah Cornelius, and Steve Carter, 1998, Addison Wesley Longman, Ltd., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ (Available at Lehman College Bookstore) Cartography: Thematic Map Design, Borden Dent, 1999, William C. Brown Publishers/McGraw-Hill, New York, NY (Available at Lehman College Bookstore and on reserve at Lehman Library) COURSE